Dec. 21, 2013

Written by

Steve Wood

Courier-Post

44% of teens get their licenses within a year of reaching the minimum driving age for their respective states, down from more than two-thirds 20 years ago, according to an August 2013 study from the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety. 36% of the 1,039 teenagers surveyed by the foundation said driving in general was too expensive.

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A panicked Kristen Brozina called her dad.

For nearly nine years, a typical call between the two involved Jim Brozina quoting Dr. Seuss, Harry Potter or Shakespeare, whatever literature was around to keep alive their daily streak of reading to each other.

Instead, 17-year-old Kristen had a scary nonfiction tale of her own: She had been in a car accident. “It made me hyper-aware of just how powerful a car was,” she recalls. “And it was something I didn’t need.”

Later that year, Brozina left her Millville home to live at Rowan University, ending the reading streak with her dad at 3,218 days and curbing any desire to drive.

“It seems like a risk I don’t need to take, not just with my own life but with other people.”

While concern for her safety and others has kept Brozina from driving, there are other factors keeping millennials off the road these days, especially in New Jersey.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the state has the highest licensing age in America. Reasons include driving costs, joblessness and even social media, all of which have delayed or deprived some young people from achieving what was once a high school milestone.

Nationally, only 44 percent of teens get their licenses within a year of reaching the minimum driving age for their respective states, down from more than two-thirds 20 years ago, according to an August 2013 study from the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety.

About 36 percent of the 1,039 teenagers surveyed by the foundation said driving in general was too expensive.

Insufficient funds and the lack of a vehicle deterred Michael Fisher from pursuing a driver’s license while at Millville Senior High School.

“My family didn’t have a car, so I knew there was no way I would get one,” he noted. “And I saw no point in getting my license.”

Spurred by improved finances and an expiring permit, Fisher, now 25, took the road test several years ago but quickly hit the brakes on his driving plans.

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“I hit the curb while parallel parking and failed my driver’s exam.”

Unable to retake the test before his permit expired, Fisher is back to the beginning of New Jersey’s three-step graduated driver licensing (GDL) program, staring down a six-month permit process.

He still has trouble gearing up for it.

“It was very discouraging, so I’ve just been putting it off,” Fisher explains. “I never went to get my permit again.

“I would have to take the written test all over. I would have to know how far to park from the fire hydrant and things like that.”

A lack of wheels hasn’t stopped Brozina from advancing her career. For the past two years, she has worked from home as manager of media and sales for Scholastic Book Fairs.

“I didn’t apply for a ton of jobs,” says Brozina, who graduated with a 3.96 GPA. “I was fortunate enough to fall in a good position.”

Her job requires her to travel to speaking engagements at schools and conferences, sometimes out of state. She hails a taxi, even when it costs about $45 to travel to Philadelphia International Airport.

While living in Philadelphia, Brozina had no trouble navigating city streets, trusting public transit, taxis and friends for transportation.

“I would not have felt limited in jobs if I lived in Philly,” she says.

Fisher has gotten by without wheels of his own, living with his parents — next door to his longtime girlfriend — and five minutes from the bus stop.

For a while, he took bus No. 553 to get to his job at Walmart in Hammonton. Today, Fisher rides the same bus but transfers onto the No. 508 to Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, where he is pursuing a history degree.

The 30-mile commute takes about two hours and costs $4.50 each way but allows him to catch up on reading and movies, he says. It also has given his life structure.

To attend a 10:30 a.m. class, Fisher must leave the house at 8:30 to make the bus on time.

“It’s either get there 20 minutes early or get there 10 minutes late. You only shoot for early. You can’t hit on the exact time.”

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But Fisher’s schedule hinges on the punctuality of others, too.

“There have been times when the bus runs extraordinarily late and I miss a class,” he laments. “They’re rare, but they happen.”

Disinterest and cost aren’t the only reasons young people avoid driving.

This year, Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute surveyed more than 600 unlicensed young adults (ages 18 to 39) and gleaned reasons for their lack of license, such as cost (15 percent), “able to get transportation from others” (12 percent) and “too busy or not enough time to get a driver’s license” (27 percent).

Twenty-two percent said they don’t ever plan to get a driver’s license.

A 2012 study released by UCLA confirms younger Americans are driving less than previous generations.

“All things equal,” the study found, “younger generations appear to (a) travel fewer miles and (b) make fewer trips than was the case for previous generations at the same stage in their lives.”

Using 2009 data from the National Household Travel Survey for analysis, it theUCLA study found that young people born in the 1990s traveled 18 percent fewer miles and took 4 percent fewer trips than those born in previous decades.

Sixteen-year-old drivers in New Jersey require six hours of driving instruction to validate their learner’s permit. Some high school students put off their learner’s permit until they turn 17, the age when they can bypass costly driving lessons.

As supervisor of the Washington Township school district’s driver’s education program, Michael Birnbaum has seen no such hesitation among students. In fact, he sees 16-year-olds revved up to drive.

“Kids in the city may be driving less, but we’ve been pretty busy actually,” notes Birnbaum, who’s also an instructor.

“Once they turn 16, they sign up,” Birnbaum says. “(Driving school) is voluntary, but they’ve been signing up prolifically.”

Driving school isn’t cheap; it can cost as much as $400 for three two-hour lessons. As the last school district to offer driving instruction in South Jersey, Washington Township charges only $225, attracting drivers from Mount Laurel to Atlantic City, Birnbaum says.

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Money talks — and those without it walk, bike or get a ride. Only 25 percent of teens living in households with incomes under $20,000 had a driver’s license, compared with 80 percent of those in households with incomes of at least $100,000, the AAA study found.

“The kids with the money get their own car,” Birnbaum says. “The others use their parents’.”

Environment plays a major role in making a car-less lifestyle work, Brozina notes. She surrounded herself with shops, hair salons and doctor offices when she moved to Haddon Township two years ago.

“The vast majority of things I do around my home. I can get to a ton of restaurants.”

Brozina makes small but frequent trips to Acme, ensuring no food goes to waste. “Everything is always fresh,” she says with a laugh.

Not having a car also limits impulsive drives and buys. When Brozina wants to shop at the mall, she gets a ride from friends or her fiancé, Dan.

“All the things that are far away I would consider a social activity, so I can get them to pick me up,” she says.

And if her fiancé doesn’t want to?

“I would call my fiancé, whine and say, ‘Think about all the money I’m not spending.’ ”

Fisher sees himself completing the GDL after graduation.

“I see the ability to drive in my future. I want to be more flexible and not worry about businesses along the bus line.

“I want to go where the job is.”

Brozina sometimes putters around the neighborhood in her fiance’s car just to freshen her driving skills.

But from where she stands, there are hardly any road trips on the horizon.

“I never was into (driving) the way that other people are,” she says. “I think I saw it then just how I see it now.

“If you were living in the right area with loads of opportunities, you could live without a car, and I thought that would be me.”

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